The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

She once told me that every woman has four smiles. ‘Only four?’ ‘The First Smile,’ she’d said, ignoring me, ‘is the unconscious one that happens without thinking about it, like smiling at a kid in the street, or smiling back at someone who’s smiling at us from a TV screen.’ ‘I don’t smile at the TV.’ ‘Everybody smiles at the TV. That’s why we have them.’ ‘I don’t smile at the TV.’ ‘The Second Smile,’ she’d persisted, ‘is the polite one, the kind we use to invite friends into a house when they come to the door, or to greet them in a restaurant.’ ‘Are they paying?’ I’d asked. ‘You wanna hear this, or not?’ ‘If I say not, will you stop?’ ‘The Third Smile is the one we use against other people.’ ‘Smiling against people, huh?’ ‘Sure. It’s a good one. With some girls, the best smile they’ve got is the one they use to keep people away.’ ‘I’m gonna let that pass, and skip to the fourth.’ ‘Aaah! The Fourth Smile is the one we only give to the one we love. It’s the one that says You’re the one. Nobody else ever gets that smile. No matter how happy you are with someone, and no matter how much you like someone, even if you like them so much that you love them really, really a lot, nobody ever gets the Fourth Smile except the one you’re truly in love with.’ ‘What happens if you break up?’ ‘The Fourth Smile goes with the girl,’ she’d said to me that day. ‘The Fourth Smile always goes with the girl. For ex-boyfriends it’s the Second Smile from then on, unless he’s a bad ex-boyfriend. Bad...